Flyers' latest change: Timonen gets power-play demotion

VOORHEES, N.J. — For almost every one of his 1,023 NHL games, the last eight of which being the distressing variety, Kimmo Timonen knew one thing: He was on the No. 1 power play.

Career game No. 1,024, which will occur Thursday at the Wells Fargo Center against the New York Rangers.

And?

“Everything good,” Timonen said, “ends sometime.”

Given a week between games — and given a mandate to start scoring more than two goals a night — the Flyers retreated to the Skate Zone and tried to find answers. One was to dump Timonen from the first power-play unit to the second.

And who says, anyway, that the Flyers never change their culture?

“From a competitive level, he knows he can play better,” Craig Berube said Wednesday, after practice. “There’s a lot of guys that know they can play better. It’s not just him. Everybody can play better. As a team, I’m not here to single anybody out.

“As a team standpoint, we all can play better.”

The Flyers are 1-7, have yet to score three goals in a game, and are onto their second head coach already. So Berube probably has a point. For that, he will begin with the power play, which has gone 3-for-33, replacing Timonen at the point with Mark Streit, and injecting Vinny Lecavalier into the mix with Wayne Simmonds, Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek.

That means Timonen, he of the 60 goals and 298 career power-play points, a noted man-advantage artist, a standard at the position, will take roughly a 60-percent power-play workload cut and join Erik Gustafsson, Tye McGinn, Matt Read and Brayden Schenn on the second unit.

Just last season, Timonen enjoyed a celebration of his 1,000th career game. Wednesday, he was hardly in such a mood to be festive.

“I’m mad about it, yeah,” he said. “I can’t lie to you. It’s one of those things that if you are not mad about it, you don’t care. And I am not mad about the guys, I am not mad about the coach, I am just mad about myself. I have to be better out there. That’s all.”

Timonen left the last game, a 4-1 loss last Thursday to Pittsburgh, with a lower-body injury. But it was the scoring sheet, not the medical report, that caused his demotion, as he has played in all eight games without a point, playing to a minus-2.

“Well, you know, obviously I have played power-play for 15 years now, so it is a big deal,” he said. “But I am an old-school type of guy and I always feel you have to earn your spot on a power play or penalty-killing. And when you get taken out of a power play, I take that as, ‘You have to be better.’ Maybe I am, like I said, a little old-school about it, but that’s a message that I have to play better.”

He’s not alone, and he knows that, and Berube does, too. But something had to budge, and it was the power play. So Streit will have a chance, beginning tonight, in a spot that once owned by Timonen.

“We’re one team,” Streit said. “We want to win as a group. There is so much potential in this room. Sometimes you play a little more and sometimes a little less. I was on the second unit, me and Vinny, and we tried to work as good as possible to score goals if you get the opportunity.

“I think the way we started the season, everyone had enough messages. They realize how important the next games are. There are some positives in our game. We really couldn’t score and have had some unfortunate bounces. I think everybody realizes what time it is.